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By Dan McLaughlin Posted in 2008 | Mickey Kaus | Obamafiles | Rube-gate — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Mickey Kaus absolutely nails what's so condescending about guys like Obama:

He doesn't patronize everyone equally. Specifically, he regards the views of these Pennsylvanians as epiphenomena--byproducts of economic stagnation--in a way he doesn't regard, say, his own views as epiphenomena.** Once the Pennsylvanians get some jobs back, they'll change and become as enlightened as Obama [and] the San Franciscans to whom he was talking. That's the clear logic of his argument. Superiority of this sort -- not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views -- is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.

Read the whole thing...this is exactly it, and is one of the signals of Obama having been raised by a sociologist and educated in Ivy League institutions that are famous for this kind of thinking and its close cousin, the "false consciousness" arguments of Marxists and "Crits" (critical race/gender academic studies). I mean, all of us believe that we are not just right but use better reasoning to get there, but it's another matter to take the view that my beliefs are the product of pristine process of logic and empathy, but your beliefs are just prejudices to be explained away by circumstance, and unworthy even of refuting. And, of course, Kaus' social-egalitarian point harks back to the point I have been making for some time: Republicans, even ones born to wealth and privilege like George W. Bush, end up making more convincing and less phony populists because it's easier to run as a cultural populist against people who really do look down on you for the things you share in common with the average voter, than to run as an economic populist when you yourself don't share much or anything in common with the economic circumstances of the average voter.